Views about Build 2018!

I've been a dev all of my professional life and for me build was the equivalent of E3. I'd rush to my msdn account downloads and grab the latest stuff and immediately start writing stuff (mostly just for fun). But I haven't been excited at all about the last couple of builds. Nothing there for me. I get it, cloud is the future, but working in a corporate environment that is still using windows 7 (like a LOT of corp environments) we know it'll be a while before we can make use of any of that stuff. And, taking into account that I am in a position that works with the government I KNOW we aren't going to see anything cloud related for even longer (We FINALLY got rid of all our XP machines last year). MS is a business trying to make money, but it seems they are mostly focused on the top 10 of the fortune 500 or so. Thats it. I get it, go where the money is, just don't expect the bulk of your developers (you know, those guys who don't work in Silicon valley or Seattle) to be excited about the cloud, etc. when we're still trying to support windows 7 systems and working to upgrade to 10.

Its Not. Sorry to inform you but you are grossly wrong. See xamarin as an example. There were sessions on Xamarin as well as XAML standards both of which are very much consumer focussed dev technologies.

XAML, UWP... For what?! Business apps? C'mon, you gotta be kidding. "U" in UWP comes from universal (Pc, Mobile, Xbox) but without phones universality is just a wish. We live in a world where even greatest business have mobile frontends. And guess how many developers are interested in developing mobile frontend for dead platform. And having mobile frontend on Windows PC (UWP app) is just BS. People will rather use web browser and access functionality. Another guess - how many people actually use Edge to access web content? And this fact is really important. Not only consumers but also developers, prefer to use and write native Win32 app (e.g. Chrome, Firefox). Even "old" Paint instead of UWP Paint3D. And for full fledge business desktop apps, devs and users like look and feel win forms provides (talking about ms technologies only). In that sense, UWP is failure - it haven't provided upgrade nor to native, nor to managed (WinForms) environments. People were just not happy about it. How many people enjoy using new Mail and Calendar app, Photos, Grovie, Movies and TV as player in comparison to outlook express, VLC, etc... And if you build a system on technology people don't embrace they will not embrace the system as well. And we see Win10 loosing ground, struggling to reach that 1b users. Android has how much already? It's pretty obvious, MS is loosing not only users but also ground and UWP is not helping. It might be it is even the reason! Not as an idea, but as a realization.

Build was a big disappointment for me this year. But last year wasn’t stellar either. I’ve basically come to realize that Windows itself is both no longer exciting, nor aimed towards me. Microsoft has gone all in on business, cloud, and AI. I’m just a consumer, none of what MS is aiming for interests me.

These days my Windows PC is just a dumb pipe that boots Steam and lets me do some web browsing. Microsoft’s store, cloud, and gaming solutions pale compared to third party solutions aimed at normal consumers. Both Google and Apple have hugely superior cloud systems or AI support and both have perfectly acceptable office solutions. They also have a full blown ecosystem of apps that work better on mobile and pc together, and it’s all cloud based.

I never thought I’d say this but if not for Direct X support I’d stop using a Windows computer entirely. Windows is doing nothing for consumers and that’s fine. They’re laser focused and highly profitable now. But they’re going to lose a lot of regular consumers like me along the way. They already have really. Build just proved that more than ever.

Even the client side stuff was focused on enterprise development: Microsoft 365.
Microsoft has abandoned the consumer market all together. As someone said, they should sell XBOX to Amazon.

That would make a lot of sense honestly... hell, sell it to anyone with the money and the desire to make it work. Amazon, Apple, Google, whatever. Whomever will put in the time and effort to develop and fight for that market segment and do it right.

I really, really wish there were alternative PC gaming options out there but Direct X is literally the last shred of control keeping people from dropping Windows entirely for gaming. If not for that one thing who knows what market shifts would take place.